


your ex-lover is dead

by nikkiRA



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Getting Back Together, M/M, Talking about your feelings like grown ass adults, despite the title no ex lovers are dead, no ex lovers were harmed in the making of this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-11-02 07:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20661392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkiRA/pseuds/nikkiRA
Summary: The thing is that once you learn a language, it’s hard to forget it. Ronan still has Latin running through his veins, still talks to Opal in the language of the trees. He and Adam Parrish had been fluent in each other for a long time, and it is hard to unlearn. So there are a lot of non-verbal communication between the two of them before they remember things aren’t like that anymore. There are glances and smirks, messages passed through looks and raised eyebrows before one of them remembers and looks away.Adam and Ronan reunite at Gansey's wedding after a nasty breakup.





	your ex-lover is dead

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe it's the year of our lord 2019 and i'm writing trc fanfiction again. i've had this half written for eighty five years, but i recently reread the series and the fire was rekindled. 
> 
> title is from the song your ex-lover is dead by stars

“Are you sure it will be okay?”

_ No,  _ Ronan thinks to himself.  _ Nothing has really been okay since. _

“Give me some credit, Gansey,” is what he says. Gansey rubs his thumb over his lip. 

“If you’re sure --”

“Fuck off Dick,” he snaps. “I’ll be on my best fucking behaviour.”

Gansey gives him such a thankful look that Ronan hates himself a little. A lot. 

“Thank you,” Gansey says. 

“Get out of my house,” Ronan says. 

Later, he gets a text from a number he no longer has saved but still has memorized. 

_ Truce for Gansey’s wedding? _

He stares at the number, waits for three hours, and then texts back  _ yeah.  _

* * *

Gansey’s bachelor party is not exactly… well. Suffice to say it’s almost exactly what Ronan would imagine Gansey’s bachelor party to be, which is to say both his sister and Roger Malory are there. Ronan doesn’t know how he’s still alive. Sometimes he thinks maybe he  _ isn’t.  _ They’ve been haunted before, after all. 

Not for the first time and not for the last, he misses Noah. 

The worst part about Gansey’s bachelor party is that Gansey’s two best men couldn’t stand being in the same room together, which made things rather difficult to plan. 

Actually, no, that wasn’t the problem. Both Adam and Ronan loved Gansey enough to be grown up about the whole thing. The problem was that both of them kept forgetting that they weren’t supposed to be able to stay in the same room together. 

The thing is that once you learn a language, it’s hard to forget it. Ronan still has Latin running through his veins, still talks to Opal in the language of the trees. He and Adam Parrish had been fluent in each other for a long time, and it is hard to unlearn. So there are a lot of non-verbal communication between the two of them before they remember things aren’t like that anymore. There are glances and smirks, messages passed through looks and raised eyebrows before one of them remembers and looks away. 

Needless to say, Ronan is very drunk. 

Gansey is in the corner having some kind of sibling fight with Helen that involves a lot of poking, and Ronan has been cornered by Roger Malory. Malory babbles on and on about ley lines and dead kings, and Ronan feels like he’s 18 again. It isn’t that he doesn’t still have magic flowing through his veins -- Ronan can still dream worlds, he just doesn’t want to talk to Roger fucking Malory about it. 

There’s a tap on his shoulder, and Adam steps up beside him. He gives Malory a nod and says, “Gansey’s looking for you. Something about the origin of Welsh names?”

Malory brightens. “Yes, yes, of course!” And then he hurries away. Or, well. Shuffles away. 

“God I owe Gansey,” Ronan says, very firmly not looking at Adam beside him. 

“Gansey didn’t actually want him,” Adam says carefully. Neutrally. “I just know you hate talking to Malory.”

Ronan clears his throat. “Thanks, Parrish,” he says. He heads over to the bar and is surprised when Adam follows him, hopping up onto the stool next to him and asking for a glass of water. Adam shakes his head, cupping his hands around the cup, and then says, “I can’t believe he’s still alive.”

_ Do not,  _ the logical, sober part of Ronan says.  _ It’s only going to hurt.  _

_ Don’t tell me what to do,  _ drunk Ronan tells it. 

“He’s so fucking pale I can almost see through him,” he says. 

Adam’s mouth quirks up. Ronan ignores it. “Maybe he can’t die.”

Ronan huffs a laugh. “Can I ask why the hell Helen is here?”

Adam rolls his eyes. “You know Gansey. ‘The Gansey siblings are a unique species,’” Adam says in a perfect replication of Gansey’s accent. Ronan snorts. 

“Only Gansey would bring his sister and his hundred year old friend to his bachelor party.”

Adam opens his mouth to respond when someone claps Ronan on the back. “Hello friends!” Henry Cheng says in their ears. Ronan and Adam exchange looks. 

It wasn’t that Ronan had a problem with Henry Cheng. He had accepted him as part of Gansey’s entourage and had even grown to kind of like him, in the same way he had grown to like Blue, as someone he had never wanted around but had learned to deal with. But here, in this room with these people, Ronan kind of feels seventeen again, so he shrugs Cheng’s hand off his shoulder and exchanges another look with Adam. 

“Hi, Henry,” Adam says. Ronan grunts a hello and orders another beer. 

“What about this bachelor party, huh? It’s kicking. And by that I mean Helen is literally kicking Gansey right now.”

Ronan looks over to where Gansey is simultaneously talking to Malory while also doing an odd sort of jig in an attempt to avoid Helen’s feet. Adam sighs, and the three of them are united, momentarily, in the way you only can be when you’re watching someone you love very much with exasperated fondness. “God, they’re like twelve,” Ronan says. Adam pinches the bridge of his nose.

“This is why I don’t drink,” he mutters. 

“Helen cried on the way over. I think they’re reverting back to a childlike state to compensate for the fact that her little brother is getting married tomorrow.” 

Ronan snorts. Adam kicks him. 

“Well, gentlemen,” Henry says, clapping them on the back again. “Enjoy your night. Try to avoid that old guy, he spits when he talks.” 

“Does he,” Ronan says dryly. Adam kicks him again. 

Adam says quietly, “He seems different. Not like he was --” he cuts off abruptly, looking down at his hands. Ronan knows how that sentence ends.  _ Before we broke up and Gansey had to see us separately.  _ As if Gansey was their child, splitting his time between his divorced parents. 

As if Adam was following the same line of thought, he says, “How’s Opal?” His voice is thick with guilt and Ronan feels the urge to do anything he can to make it better. It’s a reflex he’s had since the minute he met Adam Parrish, when it was easier to hate him than to admit that something about Gansey’s newest project made him feel alive in a way he hadn’t since his father’s death. Opal is heartbroken, is the truth, wandering around the Barns with her teeth clamped onto Adam’s watch, but he can’t bring himself to tell Adam that, can’t bear to see guilt and self-hatred on his face when it was Ronan’s fault that this had happened. 

“She’s fine,” he says. “Relatively.” It’s not a lie. Everything is relative. 

Adam looks slightly relieved, a soft smile on his face, so the not-quite lie is worth it. 

_ I told you this was going to hurt,  _ he tells himself. 

_ Shut up,  _ he fires back. 

“She misses you,” he says quietly. What he means is  _ I miss you.  _

“I miss her, too,” Adam says. What he means is  _ I miss you,  _ but Ronan is drunk and the nuances of the language of Adam Parrish are lost on him. So instead he just finishes his beer and excuses himself. 

* * *

“See?” Henry says triumphantly. “I told you my plan would work. They’re bonding over what a douche I am.”

“You’re not a douche,” Gansey, ever the loyalist, says, rubbing his thumb on his bottom lip and watching Adam and Ronan at the bar. Helen and Malory are keeping each other occupied, talking about God only knows what, but at least she wasn’t trying to kick him anymore. 

“Not usually, but I was really trying here. I acted like the guy in your Intro to Psych class. I used the term ‘childlike state’.”

“I didn’t take Intro to Psych,” Gansey says distractedly. 

“Not you, you. The royal you.” Gansey is considering this when he sees Ronan get up and head towards the bathroom. He sees Adam’s head drop for a second, sees his shoulders tense up, before he gets up, too. Gansey sighs. 

“It was a good try, at least,” he says. Henry looks near distraught at the defeat of his plan. 

“What the hell happened, man? If I’d had to choose, I’d have said you and Blue would’ve broken up before they did.”

“Hey!”

“You know what I mean. Do you remember the way Lynch used to look at him? Of course you do, you lived with him. Made me feel unclean.”

Gansey turns away from the spot where they’d been. “Adam finished college,” he says sadly. “He got a job offer in New York. I think Ronan… I don’t know. He was mad because Adam accepted it without talking to him, and Ronan didn’t want to move to New York. You know what the Barns meant to him. Adam said Ronan couldn’t expect him to stay in Henrietta for the rest of his life and Ronan said why not? Adam told him there was nothing for him there. Ronan said what about me? Adam blew up, Ronan blew up. Ronan told him to get out, Adam told him fine, he wasn’t coming back.”

“Oh come on. There’s no way Lynch meant it.”

Gansey shrugs. He didn’t believe in talking about your friends behind their backs, which is why he doesn’t tell Henry what he’s really thinking, which is: Ronan’s stubbornness and natural inclination towards being a shithead had butted up against Adam’s anger issues, which was always a bad fight when it happened. On top of that was Ronan, hurt that Adam wanted to leave, and Adam, hurt that Ronan was choosing Henrietta over him. It was Adam’s lofty goals against Ronan’s magical home, a future versus the past, a fight between a man who went straight to the jugular in everything he did versus a man who could strike you down without even realizing he had done it. It was a fight that had been brewing since the beginning: Adam’s refusal to stay. Ronan’s refusal to leave. The two most stubborn people he knew, head to head. Of course it had imploded. 

Adam had called him crying. Gansey had never heard Adam cry before. He thought back five years ago and had to consider that maybe he had given the shovel talk to the wrong person. He had called Ronan seventeen times in a row before he had finally picked up, and he had said, “Ronan,” and Ronan had said, “Gansey,” and then Ronan, too, started to cry, although he did his best to pretend he wasn’t. Gansey had said, “Why don’t you just call him?” And Ronan had said “And say what?” 

That had been five months ago. 

The problem, Adam had told him, was that sometimes being in love wasn’t enough. Gansey had told him that was bullshit, and Adam had snapped back  _ it’s not exactly working for me, is it? This isn’t a goddamn Disney movie, Gansey.  _

Gansey had held his tongue and watched his two best friends cave in on themselves, and then he had to plan his wedding. 

“Well, shit,” Henry says, and Gansey thinks that’s a fairly accurate summary of events. 

* * *

Gansey places his hands on Ronan’s shoulders and says, “I am getting  _ married _ today.” Ronan is deeply hungover and so does not answer. 

Adam walks in the room and Gansey bounds over to him like an overly excitable dog, grabbing Adam’s hands and saying, “I am getting married!”

Adam nods. “Yes, I know. That’s why I’m here. In a tux.”

Fuck, he looked good in a tux. Ronan has to force himself to look away. He has too many memories swirling around in his head of dragging Adam into closets at various Gansey functions, unable to keep his hands off of him, pushing him up against the wall and getting on his knees, relishing in the way Adam’s knees shook and the way he grabbed uselessly at Ronan’s head. Once upon a time he had almost considered growing his hair back out, just to give Adam something to hold onto. 

But that was then, and this is now, and there will be no closet blowjobs tonight, no frantic kisses, no high that comes from being in love and unstoppable. He needs to tape a sign to Adam’s forehead to remind him. Something that says  _ broken up. Lives in New York. Broke your heart. Probably dating that girl.  _

Yeah, Gansey had given him a heads up about that.  _ He’s bringing a plus one. Just thought you should know.  _ Ronan had replied with  _ why the fuck should I care?  _ But it convinced neither of them. 

Adam gives him an appraising look and then says, “You look like shit.” Ronan cannot say what he is thinking, which is  _ you look fucking gorgeous,  _ so he just grunts noncommittally. 

Adam used to understand every one of Ronan’s grunts, but now he just says, “I told Gansey it wasn’t smart to have the bachelor’s party the night before.” Ronan grunts again. 

He’s partnered with Calla, who leers at him. Ronan gives her his scariest glare back, but is unsurprised when it doesn’t do anything. Adam is partnered with Helen, just behind him, and Henry is last, partnered with some weird girl Blue had met at whatever weird college she went to. Gansey had had a minor breakdown when it was time to figure out who walked first, but Adam had said that Ronan had known him the longest, so he could go first. The walk down the aisle is not very long; he takes his place and ties to pretend he belongs there. 

Adam takes his place beside him and blows out air. Then he says, unexpectedly, “I miss Noah.”

Ronan can’t deny that he was thinking the same thing. They never did find out what had happened to Noah. Ronan nods. 

“Me too,” he says. 

He thinks if he had to explain it, it could be boiled down to him feeling out of place, in a tuxedo in a room filled with people he doesn’t know and who he probably wouldn’t like anyway, and he doesn’t think anything could possibly be any less  _ Ronan Lynch  _ if it tried. So he clings to the one thing he knows, and that thing is Adam. 

“What do you think would have happened if the curse hadn’t been broken?” He mutters. 

“That would make ‘you may now kiss the bride’ pretty fucking awkward.” 

“‘You may now awkwardly hug the bride so that you don’t drop dead.’” 

Adam laughs quietly. “It’s too bad we couldn’t get Blue to kiss Malory.” 

“Are you suggesting that Malory is also Blue’s true love?” 

“He and Gansey are awfully similar,” Adam says, completely seriously.

Ronan snorts so loudly that people turn to look at him. He is about to respond when Gansey comes hurrying up the aisle and stands beside him. 

“I think you’re supposed to walk a little slower than that,” Ronan tells him. Gansey is bouncing on the balls of his feet. Adam leans across Ronan. 

“Hey Gansey, did I hear you’re getting married today?” 

“I would flip you off if my parents weren’t watching, Adam.” 

Adam moves back with a smile on his face. It is the smile Ronan loves best; easy and open, Adam Parrish not necessarily at his best, but at his truest. When he was younger he thought he’d burn cities down for that smile, and if he’s being honest with himself he still would, even now. That smile makes Ronan invincible, and so when everyone turns to look at Blue, Ronan is looking at Adam. 

When he finally tears his eyes away to look at Blue even he has to admit that she’s breathtaking. She is arm in arm with her mother. Beside him, he hears Adam breathe out a small  _ wow.  _ Ronan thinks Gansey might actually be dead. Again. 

“Guarantee you Gansey cries,” Adam whispers to him. 

“I can hear you,” Gansey says. 

Adam’s arm brushes against his. 

This is the worst day of Ronan’s life. 

* * *

The Gansey’s had spared no expense for their sons wedding; the decor was extravagant, there were two photobooths, and Ronan was pretty sure each centerpiece could have paid for someone’s college tuition. Naturally, Ronan ignores all of this and goes to one of the open bars. 

He is sitting at the head table with the wedding party and their dates, which means  _ Marianne  _ is there. Adam sits beside her, leaning close and talking to her in a quiet voice. Her cheeks are flush with laughter. Ronan wants to hate her, but he just hates himself instead. 

“You look like you’re having the time of your life,” Cheng says. Ronan rolls his eyes. 

“How long do weddings usually last?” 

“My father’s third wedding was like, ten hours.” 

Ronan swears. He finishes off his drink and stands. “Do you want a drink?” He asks Cheng, who nods. 

“Gin and tonic.” 

“Fancy,” Ronan mutters. 

“I figured at a wedding I should upgrade my habit of drinking vodka straight from the bottle.” 

Ronan thinks he might actually like Henry Cheng more than he had initially thought. 

An hour later and Ronan is very drunk and so is Henry and they have their arms around each other and Henry is telling him a story that Ronan cannot remember the plot of, but he knows it is  _ hilarious.  _ Henry is wheezing with laughter in his ear and Ronan is only glancing at Adam about once every forty-five seconds, as opposed to the every fifteen or so that it had been before. 

He calls that progress. 

* * *

Henry eventually excuses himself to ask Mrs. Gansey for a dance, something Ronan vows to ruthlessly mock him for later. Ronan is alone; Adam and  _ Marianne  _ are not there, and Ronan doesn’t want to think about where they are. 

Eventually, the bride herself wanders over, sitting down in Henry’s abandoned chair and grimacing. 

“God, Ronan, I can smell you from a mile away. How are you standing?”

“Technically I’m sitting,” he says. Blue flicks him on the forehead. He leans forwards and gives her a sloppy kiss on the side of the head. 

“I am cutting you off,” Blue says, wiping her head. She grabs the drink out of his hand and puts it near Adam’s plate. Then she looks at him with her head cocked. 

She seems to make a decision. “Come on. We’re going outside.”

He listens to her without complaint, getting up and following her outside. She hands him a water from somewhere, Ronan isn’t entirely sure where. He drinks it; it doesn’t help half as much as the cold air does. 

“Henry Cheng is a bad influence,” he mutters. 

“I might believe that if you hadn’t been doing this pre-Henry Cheng.” 

“Is that how we’re measuring time now? Pre- and post-Henry Cheng? Huh, Mrs. Gansey?” 

Blue hits him. “Don’t start,” she says, which is fair, since she wasn’t taking the Gansey name.

Ronan kisses her on the top of the head. 

“I like this drunk Ronan,” she says. “He is much better than mean drunk Ronan.” 

“I’m never mean.” 

Blue loops her arm through his and says, “How are you?”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you already know the answer.”

She sighs and says, “I just think it’s worth talking about.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” he says, running a hand over his head. “It’s been ages --”

Blue scoffs at this complete lie. “Five months, compared to --”

“And it doesn’t matter, and I mean, fuck, he brought a  _ date --” _

“Oh,” Blue says. “So that’s why you’ve looked like you’ve been sucking on a lemon all day. She’s not his date. They’re friends.”

Ronan makes a noise to signal his disbelief in that statement. Blue hits him on the arm. 

“They  _ are,  _ Marianne has a girlfriend.”

Ronan curls his lip a little. It’s his concession that she might win this argument. “Why did he bring her then?”

“Probably so both of you would have someone to talk to.”

“What does that mean?”

Blue gives him an exasperated look. “The two of you obviously weren’t going to be able to be together, which meant one of you got Henry to talk to and one of you was going to end up alone. Adam brought a date. He gave you Henry.”

“Oh, come on.”

“It’s true! Don’t be bitter just because you only have three friends.”

He laughs and puts her in a headlock. She kicks at his shins ineffectively. That’s how Gansey finds them. 

“What are you doing to my wife?” He asks, sounding disgustingly pleased with himself. 

“She started it,” Ronan says. Blue kicks him once more and he releases her, smoothing down her hair for her. 

“Come dance,” she says. Ronan says, “Absolutely not.”

Blue sticks her tongue out at him, and her and Gansey head back inside.

Ronan rubs the back of his neck and sighs. So Marianne wasn’t Adam’s new girlfriend. Whatever, it didn’t matter. Him and Adam didn’t matter anymore. 

He knows he’s probably being ridiculous, that Blue was probably right, but thinking logically about it doesn’t help. He still can’t help but see green when he thinks about them. Ronan wasn’t generally the jealous type, but he couldn’t help it in this situation. 

He missed Adam. He had missed Adam since the day Adam had left. 

He had regretted the words the minute he said them.  _ Have fun in New York.  _ He still dreamt about them. They bounced around in his head, mocking him, tormenting him all alone in his empty bed. Sometimes he wakes up with balled up paper in his fists, and when he folds them out they always say those words over and over. He regretted it the minute he said them, but he couldn’t take them back. He had stayed, frozen, as Adam waited, and waited, and waited for him to say something, but Ronan had just stared, and eventually Adam had left. 

Ronan had tried to call him back, but his voice didn’t work. And Adam had left, because Adam had always told Ronan he wasn’t staying in Henrietta. 

And Ronan had been alone since then. 

* * *

Adam doesn’t understand rich people. This has never changed. 

The Gansey’s had rented out the hotel for anyone who wanted to stay. Is that what people did when they had stupid amounts of money? 

Marianne had a car and didn’t drink, so she had driven herself home after saying goodbye. Adam wasn’t exactly eager to drive back home, so he had taken the Gansey’s up on their offer. It didn’t feel like charity if it applied to everyone else. At least that was what he told himself to make himself feel better. Even Ronan was staying, not that he wanted to think about that. 

He stayed for as long as he could after Marianne left, but he could only stand talking to Malory for so long. Blue and Gansey were busy being in love, and Ronan… well. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to Ronan. Quite the opposite. It’s just that talking to Ronan just seemed to make things worse, because he missed him more than he thought possible. 

_ Have fun in New York.  _ As if anything Adam did without Ronan could be enjoyable. 

He got his card key from the front desk and headed up. His room was surrounded by the rest of the wedding party along with Gansey and Blue, which meant that one of these rooms belonged to Ronan. Which meant Adam was going to be sleeping a few feet from Ronan. 

It shouldn’t be a big deal, but Adam can perfectly picture him, and he hasn’t slept well in five months. He sighs as he takes off his tux, making sure to properly put it away. It was rented, after all. 

Adam looks out the window at the impressive balcony. He debates going to stand outside. 

He shut the blinds instead. 

* * *

He falls into a fitful sleep and wakes to banging on his door. He fumbles for the light and then crosses to the door, looking through the little peephole. 

Ronan. 

Adam has the brief thought that maybe he shouldn’t open the door, but by the time he’s finished thinking it the door is already open. 

“Hi,” he says, simply. Ronan is still dressed in his tux, although it’s in such a state of disarray that if any of the elderly Gansey women had seen him, they must surely have gasped in horror. Ronan runs a hand over his head. His hair is a little longer then the last time Adam had seen him. 

“Hi,” he says again. 

Ronan says, “I want to move to New York.”

Adam says, “What?”

“I want to move to New York,” Ronan says again. 

“No, I heard you. What?”

Ronan blinks at him slowly. He is extremely drunk and apparently hadn’t thought past that initial opening. 

“What do you mean, what? It’s a yes or no question.”

“That was not a question.” Adam wonders if he’s drunk and hallucinating. 

“It’s an apology.”

“Not much of that, either.”

Ronan glares. “Can I come in or are you going to make me stand out here?”

Adam runs his tongue over his teeth and then stands aside. 

Ronan moves past him and stands in the middle of the suite, hands shoved in his pockets. Adam closes the door and leans against it, keeping his palms against the door to steady himself. He waits. Ronan doesn’t say anything. Adam also does not say anything. 

He won’t be the one to break first. 

Finally Ronan says, “Can you say something?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I don’t know Parrish, just. Just something.”

Adam, who had spent the entire night biting back things he wanted to say to Ronan, suddenly can’t think of anything at all. He shrugs. Then he says, “You don’t want to move to New York.”

Ronan gets that steely look on his face, the one he always gets when being bull-headed. “Yes, I do.”

“No you  _ don’t,”  _ Adam says ferociously. Ronan takes a step back. 

“Why not?”

Adam takes a breath. In through his nose, out through his mouth. Or was it the other way around? He can’t remember. 

“Because if you want to move to New York,” he says slowly. “Then that means that we have spent five months like this for no reason. If you want to move to New York now, then that means that if you had have just  _ swallowed your goddamn pride five months ago --” _

“Swallowed MY pride?” Ronan hisses. “We’re only here because of your pride, Parrish, because you’re so fucking determined to get away from Henrietta that you can’t recognize that you have a  _ home  _ there.”

“That’s not my home, it’s --”

“Oh, don’t fucking start. That is your home, Parrish, because it is with  _ me.  _ And I fucked up, because I thought it had to be at the Barns, but it doesn’t, it just has to be  _ us.  _ So I’m here and I’m apologizing and I’m telling you I want to move to fucking New York because this is not worth it. It’s not fucking worth it.”

Adam digs his nails into the door and considers this. And then he says, “That seems like a really convoluted way to tell me that home is where the heart is.”

“Fuck off --”

“No, no, it was… touching, really. Like a Hallmark movie.”

Ronan rolls his eyes and moves forward as if to leave, and Adam says, “I was offered a job in Richmond.”

Ronan stops. “What?”

Adam does not repeat himself. He knows Ronan heard. 

Ronan says, “Did you take it?”

“I haven’t given them an answer yet.”

Ronan swallows. “Are you going to take it?”

Adam sighs and moves away from the door, sitting down on the edge of his bed. “I don’t know.”

“Is it more money?” Ronan speaks slowly, as if he isn’t entirely sure they’re really having this conversation as if nothing had happened between them. 

“A bit,” Adam admits. 

“Well,” Ronan says. “Maybe you should make a pros and cons list.”

Adam bites back a smile. “Okay,” he says, watching Ronan as he shoves his hands back in his pockets and affects a lazy stance once again. “The number one con right now is I’d be pretty close to my ex-boyfriend.”

Ronan nods, as if he was really giving thought to this. “I guess you’ll have to accept his apology.”

Adam looks at the ground. “What if it’s not that simple?”

“Then you’ll probably just have to kill him.”

Adam lets out a surprised laugh. “I don’t think that would be any easier.”

He looks back up at Ronan. Ronan is looking back. 

Adam says, “Five months.”

Ronan says, “I know.”

Adam says, “Would you really move to New York?”

“Anywhere you fucking want, Parrish. New York, or Canada, or fucking Timbuktu. Even fucking Florida.”

Adam raises an eyebrow. “That’s a big promise, Ronan.”

Ronan just keeps looking at Adam. Adam rubs at his eye. 

“How do we go back?” He asks. “Do you really think that we can just…” He shakes his head. “I don’t know what to do,” he says softly. 

“You don’t always have to be so fucking dramatic, Parrish,” Ronan says, shaking his head. Adam opens his mouth to ask what the hell that is supposed to mean, but Ronan steps forward, grabs Adam’s face and then kisses him. 

Adam is teetering on the edge. He can push himself forward or he can fall back. 

He falls back. He takes Ronan with him. 

The kiss is hungry; it threatens to consume Adam, and he knows he’d let it. Ronan’s hands trace over every line and curve of Adam’s body, but Adam places his hand on Ronan’s heart and keeps it there the entire time, feeling the steady heartbeat beneath his fingers. Ronan kisses him the same way Ronan does everything, by throwing himself bodily into it, and Adam goes where Ronan takes him. He tastes the same, albeit with a bit more whiskey after a wedding. He holds Adam with a kind of ferocious tenderness, another Ronan oxymoron. Adam feels safer than he ever has, and underneath it all is Ronan’s heart, alive beneath Adam’s fingers. 

Adam feels like he did when he was eighteen: a starving, hungry animal. He wants to take Ronan apart, wants to kiss every inch of his body. He hasn’t forgotten all the things you learn about a partner, still knows where to kiss, where to touch. He wants to lay Ronan out and chart his apologies on his body. 

Ronan presses his lips to Adam’s neck, and Adam manages to say, “I don’t -- I don’t have anything.” 

It’s not the  _ biggest  _ tragedy. There are plenty of other things they can do, even if Adam thinks he might go mad with how badly he wants to fuck Ronan right now. But to his disbelief, Ronan says, “I do.”

Adam pulls back, staring at Ronan with raised eyebrows. “Oh? Can’t have been that upset then,” he teases. Ronan rolls his eyes. 

“I didn’t bring it, Cheng gave it to me.”

Adam’s eyebrows raise somehow higher. “That doesn’t make things any clearer.”

“I didn’t ask him! He just -- look.” He reaches into his jacket pocket -- he is still tragically clothed -- and hands Adam a packet of lube with a note on it that says  _ go get him tiger xo.  _ Adam bites the inside of his cheek. 

“Well. Do we… thank him?”

Ronan swoops in and kisses him again. “Later,” he says. Adam can’t help but agree. 

* * *

“What did you mean when you told me to stop being so dramatic?” He asks later. Ronan, who is curled around him, laughs softly. 

“Just, you know. We broke up and it was shitty but now it’s not. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It can be simple. We were apart, and now we’re together. Easy.”

Adam thinks about this. “Easy,” he mutters, entwining their fingers together. Ronan presses his lips to Adam’s jawline, and they settle down for sleep. 

* * *

Adam is awoken at an early hour to banging on the door. He groans, checks his watch and groans louder when he sees that it says 6:23, and elbows Ronan. 

“Ronan. The door.”

Ronan grunts, wrapping an arm more snugly around Adam’s waist. “So what? It’s your room, you get it.”

“It’s probably Gansey and Blue.”

“My fucking point stands.”

“If you open the door it will save us from having to explain that we’re back together.”

Ronan makes a grumbling noise but climbs out of bed anyway, pressing a kiss to the inside of Adam’s wrist before he goes. 

As soon as he opens the door, he hears someone start clapping, and then Blue says, “I  _ knew it!” _

He hears Gansey groan. “I owe Henry a hundred dollars. I thought the lube trick would get him punched.”

Ronan says, “I can still punch him if you want.”

Blue calls out, “Adam Parrish you get your ass over here right now!”

Adam groans, gets out of bed, finds a pair of pants on the ground, and goes to the door, wiping the sleep from his eyes. Ronan puts an arm around him. Blue is beaming. Adam thinks that they’re all just a little bit too codependent on each other. 

“If either one of you says I told you so I’m shutting the door in your face,” he says, voice tired. Blue leans forward and pulls him into a hug.

“I don’t have to say it. We all know it’s true.”

He pokes her in the side and then hugs her back. He and Gansey bump fists over her head. 

“We’re leaving for the honeymoon,” he says. “Just wanted to say goodbye.”

Ronan, being a shithead, says, “Okay, goodbye.” Blue punches him in the arm and then gives him a hug, too. Ronan pats the top of her head. “Have a good honeymoon, Mr. and Mrs. Sargent.”

It’s not entirely untrue. Blue laughs. Adam laughs. Gansey laughs. Ronan was right -- it isn’t complicated. They were apart, but now they’re together. It’s the most natural thing in the world. 

After they close the door and get back into bed, Adam says, “What’s that in your hand?”

Ronan says, “What?” In such a nonchalant way that Adam is immediately suspicious. 

“In your hand. Did you dream something? What is it?”

“It’s nothing,” Ronan says. Adam narrows his eyes. 

“Ronan.”

Ronan sighs and then says, “Look, I’m not -- don’t read into it too much. It’s not -- it’s just like. Zeitgeist, or something. I don’t know.”

“Just show me,” Adam says, exasperated. Ronan opens his palm, avoiding Adam’s eye. 

It’s a ring. Thin and gold and engraved with vines. Adam picks it up with reverence and studies it. Then he puts it on. “It fits perfectly.”

“Of course it does,” Ronan says. His cheeks and ears are flushed. Adam loves him with a ferocity that shouldn’t be surprising after all of these years. 

“I don’t have anything for you,” Adam says. Ronan shoots him a look. 

“Adam --”

“It doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to,” Adam says, fully aware that if Ronan asks him to take the ring off his heart will break again. “It can just be -- I don’t know. A promise, maybe.”

“M’not giving you a fucking  _ promise  _ ring like a teenager,” Ronan says derisively. He reaches out and takes Adam’s hand, tracing the lines on his palm. “Fuck off. You know I’d marry you any day you wanted.”

Adam smiles. He lifts Ronan’s hand to his mouth and kisses the inside of his wrist, the same kiss that always sends him stomach flipping whenever Ronan does it to him. “Let me get you something first,” he says. “Then we can talk about it.”

Ronan gives him such an open, vulnerable look that Adam leans forward and kisses him. Ronan holds him, traces Adam’s cheekbones, gives himself over entirely. The past five months are a distant nightmare. This is all that matters: simple. Easy. Together. 

**Author's Note:**

> i know blue and gansey get married young! i know! but i needed the timeline to be right after college and just. fucking go with it. also yes, blue does give a long speech about marriage being a patriarchal tradition designed to shackle down women but also, and i know this from experience since i was the same but am now married, sometimes you can reconcile harmful traditions with your own traditions and turn them into something else.
> 
> tumblr @aravenlikeawritingdesk  
twitter @aravenlikea
> 
> pls come talk to me about adam parrish!!!!!


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